You gotta love an argument that says that soccer is anti-evolutionary because the players can't use their hands, lol.  I mean an argument can be made that since man has become bi-pedal and can do very talented things with their legs and feet that other animals can't it would therefore be pro-evolutionary sport.

But all that silliness aside...It is clearly a bias.  Yes, mainly directed at Europe but at the world as a whole.  It is almost like "how dare the rest of the world love and excel at a sport we find mundane?".  On a soccer pitch the US isn't the world superpower which is threatening to many Americans who feel we should be pre-eminent in all global matters.

In the US Soccer is for playing, not for watching. Ol' Frank and Richard make fun of soccer because their sports are for watching, not for playing.

Who would actually want to get out, engage the world, and have some fun when you can sit on your ass, make snide remarks, know everything, and watch the world's strongest man competition? Read their byline.

Ah, America, I love you, but you've got to get out from in front of the TV, go outside, shed some pounds, and have some fun. There's a world out there and it has three dimensions, not two.

As a die-hard soccer fan I find soccer dissing pretty funny. Tucker Carlson got his knickers in a twist last week over the World cup. He seemed to feel personally insulted that everyone else in the world was united in their devotion to it, and finally dismissed the spectacle in a distinctly childish tone claiming that it must be a stupid game since we don't get it.

I have a strange compulsion to watch Tucker Carlson because he's such a weird little dude.

I assume the Weekly Standard piece was written in a spirit of whimsy, faux envy and self-conscious pique, and was not really meant to be taken entirely seriously. The authors' tongues are pushed pretty far into their cheeks.

In looking for comparisons between soccer and other sports, I tend to think the best analogy is boxing.

Like boxing, in soccer there is a lot of exploratory jabbing and grappling designed to discover weaknesses in the defense, whether due to tactics or individual matchups, or to set up a decisive blow from an unexpected direction later in the game. A team might try to attack from the left side several times in succession, then the right, before shifting to the middle. There are also various equivalents of rope-a-doping. Sometimes a team will play the game in a defensive posture to let the other team exhaust themselves, or to draw them gradually into a risky forward deployment, and then suddenly launch a series of long ball couterattacks. Teams also attempt to frustrate the opposition by maintaining possession for extended periods, and denying the opponents touches, hoping to goad them into breakdowns in team and individual discipline. A similar thing occurs in boxing when the boxer relies on movement and clinches to frustrate the opponent.

For some reason, Americans who watch and appreciate boxing, and are entirely comfortable with, and appreciative of, strategies of endurance and patience, often claim to find the same thing incomprehensible and boring in soccer. I don't really understand why, but maybe its just because they have never viewed the game from the proper perspective.

If viewed in this way, the low scoring totals don't at all suggest some sort of "meaninglessness" or "aimlessness". One might as well say boxing is meaningless because there are only one or two knock downs per fight. And only someone who has never actually watched any soccer could say that the scoring is an "afterthought". Scores are accompanied by ecstatic celebrations by fans, announcers and team that carry on for extended periods.

There is nothing inherently non-American of "Europen" about soccer. The game emphasizes hard work, teamwork, patience and endurance, punctuated by moments of individual glory - things Americans are no less appreciative of than people and sports fans everywhere. Nor is there anything "postmodern" or "existentialist" or whatever about soccer. People have been playing very similar games for centuries, and around the world. And when they play, they are just as purpose-driven interested in winning as Americans are interested in winning at baseball or American football. That Americans are not big on soccer is due more to the contingencies of soccer's history, and the competition for attention and playing time from other established American sports, than on any quirks of national character.

The authors purport to argue that not just the Europeans, but most of South America and Africa are lost in the postmodern anomie that they find in soccer. This would just be so stupid if meant seriously that I assume it isn't really be intended to be taken seriously. One can think of several different generic descriptions that might apply to Brazilians as a people, for example, but I don't think many would think of them as lost in a weary anomie. And no one familiar with the genuine passion of fans for the game could really believe this canard.

As for the joke about arms and thumbs, I suppose one could make a similar point about dancing - a practice and art that seems to be about as old as recorded human culture.

We need to go beneath the authors' whimsical and superficial criticisms of soccer to discover what really ticks off some conservatives about the game. What is striking about soccer in the contemporary world is its global reach, international governance, intercontinental fandom and globalized market for players. Conservatives enamored with "American exceptionalism" like the fact that Americans are not much connected to a game everyone else loves - and they want to keep it that way. Soccer, and the American rejection of soccer, is a symbol for them of the general attitude that they recommend Americans take toward the rest of the world. It is the internationalism of soccer, rather than any peculiarities the game itself, that they dislike. If the situation were inverted, and the rest of the world played baseball while American's didn't, I think we would see the same sort of splenetic rejection of baseball by Weekly Standard types. We would be treated to zsimilar self-consciously silly essays about the existential meaninglessness of games without clocks and clearly defined time limits, and about the arbitrary, authoritarian control of home plate umpires, whose ball and strike calls are based on myterious subjective judgments and tyrannical dictates rather than objectively measurable and overridable criteria.

Football is indeed quite old; the oldest known football -- or soccer ball if you wish -- is from the 16th century (pig's bladder model, not rubber obviously). Football is also one of the oldest organized sports, with first clubs being formed in England before 1850. By the year 1900, there were already international football matches. If anything, football is premodern, not postmodern.

I think it's time both left and right shut up about soccer. It's just a sport. In Europe and South America it happens to be loved by both fascists and communists (Maybe the Weekly Standard guys would be happy attending a Lazio game sometime) just as baseball has fans on the right and left of the US political spectrum. Those of us who just enjoy watching and playing soccer are getting tired both of the left wing intellectuals telling us that soccer is "good for us" and the right wing idiots who think it's a foreign plot. It's time to focus on the important issues - is Germany for real? Does Zidane have anything left? What new ways can Italy find to cheat?